The rapidly shrinking “Big Blue” is thinking of flogging its semiconductor business. Word on the street is that IBM has hired Goldman Sachs to find potential buyers.

Sources within IBM claim that the company is not totally committed to the idea of selling and could seek a partner to set up a joint venture for its semiconductor operations. IBM has been selling off a lot of family silver lately. It flogged its low-end server business for $2.3 billion to Chinese PC maker Lenovo.

IBM has been getting out of hardware like a mad thing for the last decade ever since it started thinking that software and services was the way to go.